ARTS WATCH. Movie review.

`Bordello Of Blood' Stuck In Adolescence

August 16, 1996|By Mark Caro, Tribune Staff Writer.

Sure, lots of movies show topless women, and some movies show autopsy scenes, but it's a rare film that features the autopsy of a topless woman in which a quasi-undertaker tweaks her nipples and giggles, "Toot, toot!"

"Tales From the Crypt Presents Bordello of Blood" is just that rare film. Certainly, few will accuse it of being well done.

"Bordello" is the second movie to spin off from HBO's "Tales From the Crypt" series inspired by the 1950s comic books of the same name. (The first was last year's "Demon Knight.") The "Crypt" tradition is ghoulish irreverence, but here it seems merely a hip excuse to stoop low.

The title whorehouse is a place where unsuspecting randy lads are lured and then devoured by top-heavy female vampires. The madam (model Angie Everhart) delivers the coup de grace "Species"-style by sticking her tongue down the dude's throat until it pokes out his heart, which she then munches.

After one snotty young scumbucket (played convincingly by Corey Feldman) disappears into the mansion of sin, his sweet, blond, televangelist's assistant of a sister (Erika Eleniak) hires gutter-dwelling detective Rafe Guttman (Dennis Miller) to find him. Rafe confronts boobs of various types, including the slick, electric-guitar-playing televangelist (Chris Sarandon) who may be at the center of a sinister plot.

"Bordello" is based on an early story from "Back to the Future" collaborators Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis. They have gone back to adolescence here, with an assist from "Crypt" veterans and screenwriters A.L. Katz and director/producer Gilbert Adler. The movie is filled with foul language, boys-camp sexual humor and leering T&A shots.

Miller is the tour guide, and he's the same wisecracker who goes by his own name on his HBO show. (Some network synergy thing is going on.) But instead of skewering politicians and buffoonish national figures, he's sneering at easy targets like grunge kids, bikers and oafish cops. He gets off a few good lines, but he does the same on TV without the distracting naked bloodsuckers.

What is it about vampires that brings out the worst in filmmakers these days? Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's "From Dusk Till Dawn" turned into an incoherent "Evil Dead"/"Dead Alive" hand-me-down when the fangs sprouted, and the stupid gore here is even less inventive. As Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz" blares, we learn that if you squirt-gun holy water at floppy vampiresses, they explode.

The filmmakers try winning over the audience by winking at it. Feldman's vampire mimics Miller's "Saturday Night Live/Weekend Update" sign-off, shouting at him, `You are outta here!" In a later spooky setting, Miller cracks,"I feel like I'm in a bad `Tales From the Crypt' episode."